I am really excited about Shadows over Innistrad. The cards are all extremely evocative in terms of flavor, Madness is one of my favorite abilities, and moreover I love playing my games out of the graveyard. I’m also the kind of person who gets really excited by big swings in Standard, and I think that the new rotation schedule is going to be a huge benefit to the game in the long-term. Today is not going to be my end-all preview (because we are still missing way too many cards), and from what I’ve heard, we ARE going to be divvying up the eventual set reviews (I called dibs on Green a few weeks back, hopefully that pans out). I want to talk about a couple of the new cards that we have seen so far, as well as some older ones that may benefit from the change in scenery.
Before we get going, I want to make a clarification that some of these cards will not themselves be cards worth buying low on, but rather they may be indicative of larger trends. Cards shape Standard regardless of rarity- things like Lightning Bolt can have a huge ripple effect regardless of the fact that the card itself may never go up significantly in price. These elements are tough to predict (unless they are super obvious like with Lightning Bolt), and often don’t present themselves until the entire set is revealed and played with for a little bit (typically around PT time). Assume that any commons or uncommons that we discuss today fit somewhere into this discussion.
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Graveblade Marauder was always an interesting card to me. The 4 toughness and his ability is just begging for some build-around me shenanigans. Board wipe a bunch of 2 or 3 toughness creatures and attack for some decent damage with all those creatures in the graveyard.
Even if this doesn’t find a home in Standard, I like Graveblade Marauder’s chances in Casual/EDH. He is a human warrior with decent toughness and deathtouch and his ability is just screaming to be broken. Maybe a B/W list will emerge. Turn 6 could be something like Graveblade Marauder on the board with some other creatures… All he needs is ONE counter to survive a languish. Then he can swing in for pretty decent damage and his ability gets around languish with creatures in the GY.
In any case, I don’t think Graveblade Marauder will ever be completely bulk even if he doesn’t see play. This pick seems somewhat safer than others based on future casual demand. Either the card doesn’t move at all or it has upside sooner than later. Which is a better scenario than a lot of other unplayed standard cards.
I’m truly wondering if any of the other “ramp” cards will see some more play now that the Standard manabase is changing. If we don’t have fetches to fix mana will people opt to run more ramp spells to get lands on the board faster? Rather than risk drawing a tapland late and not being able to cast something?
Does Explosive Vegitation get picked up by more decks? Is there a chance that Animist’s Awakening sees some play if people start running more lands that etb tapped? Does sword of the Animist have any upside? Attach that thing to a flier and just ramp your way to success? There is a mana dork that has haste that isn’t seeing much play, does that change when we no longer can fetch-up whatever lands we need? Do battle lands see more play or less play when fetches rotate? Will crumbling vestige be “a thing” in 3 color decks from now on? Just a bunch of things I’ve been considering about rotation.
Explosive Vegetation looks good going forward, just because it’s probably one of the easiest ways to get both off colors while playing well with Evolving Wilds (which may be the crux of all 3+ color decks).
Regarding your thoughts about 4 being “the bar” for creature toughness- what do you think about Languish as a pick-up?
Ooh, good one! Definitely looks good given that our new Wrath Variant looks like it’s going to cost 6.
“Be aware that this card is banned from schools in some parts of the southern United States.”
You’re joking right?
It’s actually just errata’ed to “Intelligent Design”
but for those of you from outside the US, yes, I’m joking